Three More Music Videos that Celebrate Science (fiction)

All geeks really want out of life is to convert the world to their fandom, so it’s always rewarding to see things we’re passionate about creeping into popular culture. Science fiction is slowly becoming more mainstream, and accompanying it is a new celebration of science. A few months back I posted three music videos that celebrate the future, and here are three more I’ve found since then. Enjoy and rejoice!

Bad Blood by Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift is probably the last person you would expect to do a science fiction video, but she did, and it’s pretty sweet. The song appears to be your typical break-up song, but rather than depicting a cliched, broken romance, the video follows the plot of two bad-ass female agents after one stabs the other in the back.

After her former partner throws her out of a window, we travel through a brilliantly designed scifi world as Taylor Swift is brought back to life, dons battle armour, and goes for her revenge. The setting is evocative of Tron: Legacy, and the video features several homages to The Fifth Element. Extra bonus points for featuring an all-female cast, with the exception of guest rapper Kendrick Lamar, who exists only to provide commentary to Swift’s vendetta.

I.S.S. Is Somebody Singing by Chris Hadfield

Chris Hadfield is the astronaut who made space cool again. We’ve all seen his ground-breaking cover of Space Oddity, but the awesome doesn’t stop there. Is Somebody Singing is an original song by Hadfield and Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies. It was the first song ever to be premiered both in space and on Earth. The song was commissioned by the Celebration of Music Agency, and was performed in schools across Canada.

There are several versions of the song now, but this one was the first, and is my favorite. If it doesn’t send chills down your spine then there’s something deeply wrong with your appreciation of space and music. For bonus geek points watch this video of the two singers working on the song prior to Hadfield’s launch.

All black and white just fades to grey Where the sun rises sixteen times a day You can’t make out borders from up here Just a spinning ball within a tiny atmosphere

The Human Race–Three Days Grace

Three Days Grace released their new album Human and there are so many reasons to get excited about it. To start with, the cover art is about as steampunk as they come. And then there are the songs, ranging from reflections on humanity, to reflections are being inhuman. Perhaps the most science fiction-y song on the album is “I Am Machine,” but as this post is about music videos we’re going to talk about the title track: The Human Race.

The video is not so much a celebration of science, but a warning. It begins and ends with voice over clips from a 1998 TED talk by Billy Graham: “On Technology and Faith.” The imagery of the video focuses on humans, with shots of people trapped within machinery, dead to the world, living off of tubes that snake over and through their bodies. The song is themed around the darker side of humanity, and the feeling that we don’t belong. That we, in the words of Reverend Graham, “yearn for something more.”

“The problem is not technology, it is the person or persons using it. We are more than a body and a mind…we are a soul.”